Released in 1936, I Have Sinned (Al Khet) was the first Yiddish sound film made in Poland. Unseen for generations until its new rescue and restoration by The National Center for Jewish Film, I Have Sinned (Al Khet) blends melodrama with a bissel of comedy and music.
Set in a small Jewish town during World War I, the film follows Esther (Rachel Holzer), a rabbi’s daughter who abandons her child after her lover dies in battle and the Russians invade. Complications unfold as Esther’s friends—played by Polish-Jewish comedy team Dzigan and Schumacher—attempt to reunite mother and daughter years later.
The film’s themes of dislocation and family separation due to war and poverty are, unfortunately, deeply resonant today.
“The legendary comic duo Dzigan and Schumacher, in their film debut, are superb; the rich Polish Yiddish is delicious, and as a snapshot of mid-1930s Polish Jewry, it’s extraordinary… No film paints a more detailed picture of life in interwar Yiddishland… For those with an interest in juicy, authentic Yiddish or pre-war Jewish life in Europe, it’s invaluable.”
—Allen Lewis Rickman, The Forward
“Al Khet has the heavy chiaroscuro of a contemporary European art film. [The story] is certainly less oblivious to historical events than comparable American melodramas, haunted as it is by the wartime destruction of Galicia.”
—J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds
“A little gem—melodrama, musical numbers, historic sweep, a woman seducing a fella not knowing he is betrothed to the daughter she abandoned!”
—Mikhl Yashinsky, Yiddishist & translator
New England premiere of new restoration. Q&A with NCJF directors Sharon Pucker Rivo and Lisa Rivo and Yiddish translator Mikhl Yashinsky.
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Brookline, MA 02446
$15.00 senior
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